Today I’ve got another video blog post for you. I’m trying to move the video blogs to Mondays or Wednesdays to give me more time to prepare. In this one I’m reading chapter three of Magic’s Stealing. 🙂
Here’s the Youtube link in case you can’t see it.
You can hear the first chapter here.
Or chapter two here.
I’ve begun noticing a few tricks that are helpful when doing online readings.
The main one?
Slow down and enunciate.
This helps to prevent blurred phrases that don’t make sense once recorded, and lends to a natural pause between sentences. Having those pauses while reading allows for easier cutting in the editing phase, especially if you leave a longer pause where you know you’re going to cut something.
Then, once you take the recording into an editor like Premiere Pro, you can easily identify spots where you read a sentence twice and chop it without having to play that same sentence over and over (and over again) just to get a decent cut.
Also, once you get familiar with the program, you can figure out how to save the files correctly the first (or second time), rather than having the program complain that it can’t export properly with every format you try. In my case, I use the Microsoft Avi format (at least for now) to get the audio recording, and I have to remember to name the file I want to save before encoding it. Otherwise, it gives me an error.
The whole reading phase (including practice reads) and editing phase still takes me an hour or two. But it’s fun, and I enjoy getting to read the stories aloud. I blame being a Speech and Debate student in high school for four years for that one. Or maybe I was in Speech and Debate for four years because I enjoyed the readings…
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 